Military News

Tuesday, January 05, 2016

WASHINGTON, January 5, 2016 — The Defense Department has
received plans from each of the services for implementing plans to integrate
women into all positions in the military, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook
said today.

The office of the acting undersecretary of defense for
personnel and readiness received the plans, Cook said at a news conference.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced in December his
decision to open all positions in the military to women, with no exceptions.
Army Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command,
requested and was granted a short extension in providing his plan, Cook said.

That extension was to give Socom time to collaborate
thoroughly with the services, because many of the actions critical to
successfully integrating women into special operations specialties and units
fall under service authority, Cook said.

Group Will Oversee Implementation

Cook noted that Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work and the
vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, are
chairing a group on implementing the decision.

The group will work with the services to oversee the
short-term implementation of the decision, Cook explained, to ensure there are
no unintended consequences on the joint force. The group will periodically
update Carter and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen.
Joseph F. Dunford Jr., on the progress, he said.

The first meeting of the implementation group will take
place this week, the press secretary said.

"The services and Special Operations Command will begin
to execute the implementation of their approved plans as soon as practicable,
but no later than April 1," he added.

STUTTGART, Germany, January 5, 2016 — For two decades, the
United States “hugged the bear” in Europe, but that has to change, the
commander of U.S. European Command said.

Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who also serves as
NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, has advocated for more U.S. forces
in Europe to counter growing Russian capabilities and capacity. He spoke to
reporters traveling with Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States
and its allies saw an opportunity to try to make Russia a partner. But a
strategy document signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week names
the United States and the expansion of the NATO alliance as threats to his
country. Breedlove said the policy document merely codified Russian actions for
several years.

A ‘Revanchist Russia’

“What I would offer is that if you look at Russia’s actions
all the way back to ’08 – in Georgia, in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Crimea, in the
Donbass, and now down in Syria – we see what most call a revanchist Russia that
has put force back on the table as an instrument of national power to meet
their objectives,” the general said.

This means there has to be changes in the way U.S. military
forces operate in Europe, he added, noting that for 20 years, U.S. military
decisions were guided by the effort to make Russia a partner.

“Across that time … we have changed our force structure, we
have changed our [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] allocations,
we’ve changed our analytical allocations, [and] we’ve downsized the forces in
all the media here in Europe,” he said.

Now, Breedlove said, U.S. military officials look at Russian
capabilities and capacity and have to adjust.

More U.S. Capability in Europe

Breedlove has advocated more U.S. service members and more
capabilities in Europe, and that is beginning to happen. A fourth destroyer has
arrived in Spain, for example, and the Army is rotating a brigade-sized unit to
Europe, he said.

But it is more than simply building up numbers, he added.
For 13 years, he said, Eucom was focused on training other nations to join the
counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan.

“We are really good at counterinsurgency targeting,”
Breedlove said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve done an air campaign the
size of Iraq 1 or Iraq 2, or even in the opening days of Afghanistan. We need
to get back to those high-end skills to ensure we have the depth of bench for
that fight.

“As Afghanistan drew down, we were prescient,” he continued.
“We decided … that we needed to train to high-end Article 5 capabilities. That
was our plan, even before Crimea.” Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states
that an attack on one NATO ally will be considered an attack on all allies.

Redeveloping High-End Capability

Russia’s actions validate the decision, the general said.
“Now every soldier, sailor, airman or Marine that comes to European Command
will be focused on redeveloping that high-end kinetic fighting capability,” he
added.

All exercises and training will stress these capabilities,
the general said, and Eucom also will exercise at division and corps level in
the future.

Breedlove said he cannot tell what Putin intends to do with
the military he has re-equipped and retrained.

“Many people ask me, ‘What is Putin thinking?’ or ‘What do
you think he’s thinking?’” he said. “I’m not sure what he’s thinking, but I can
look at what he’s doing and derive from that what we should be thinking about
on our side.”